Law and Regulation

VikingCloud, a cybersecurity and PCI-compliance company, is collaborating with Fiserv Inc. to make Mastercard Inc.’s Compliance and Validation Exemption Program available to small and mid-size businesses. Announced earlier this year, Mastercard’s C-VEP exempts eligible merchants from complying with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard and validating their PCI-DSS compliance …

The U.S. cannabis market, which saw $30.1 billion in sales last year, is growing at an accelerating pace, and that’s attracting the attention of processors and other providers. The market’s emergence as a fertile payments-processing market comes as it continues to wrestle with regulatory issues and limited banking services. POSaBIT …

In a move to bolster its leading position in an increasingly difficult money-transfer market, The Western Union Co. announced Sunday it has a deal to acquire International Money Express Inc. for $500 million in cash. Better known as Intermex, Miami-based International Money Express has built a retail network of 100,000 …

Fintiv Inc., a digital-wallet developer, has sued Apple Inc., alleging the iPhone maker stole mobile-wallet technology from Fintiv to further its development of Apple Pay. The case was filed in the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division. Apple Pay debuted in October 2014. Fintiv at the time was known as …

Finzly, a developer of payments technology for financial institutions, says it is preparing to support stablecoins and tokenized deposits. The move is aimed at helping financial institutions remain relevant as programmable money becomes more common, the company says. Programmable money is a digital form of currency that can be programmed …

Identity-intelligence platform provider Forter has launched a service that it says enables digital merchants to vet AI agents across the entire shopping process, including payment. The new capability within the Forter platform is intended to help merchants combat fraud in the artificial-intelligence era, which has seen the rise of AI …

NCR Atleos Corp. said convenience store chain Casey’s joined its Allpoint ATM network. Casey’s has more than 2,900 locations. In related news, NCR Atleos said it will provide “thousands” of new ATMs to FCTI Inc., an ATM owner-operator and subsidiary of Seven Bank Ltd.. FCTI is the sole ATM operator in U.S. 7-Eleven …

Darwinium, a provider of cybersecurity software, has rolled out two new modules aimed at enhancing its digital-security and fraud-prevention platform. The modules detect criminals’ use of malicious AI agents to bypass a business’s fraud prevention defenses. The two new modules, called Beagle and Copilot, simulate malicious AI-based attacks to distinguish …

Payment processor Fiserv Inc. faces a lawsuit over allegations it misled investors over how it handled migrating merchants to Clover from its now retired Payeezy payment gateway, according to Labaton Keller Sucharow LLP, the New York City-based law firm representing the plaintiff, the City of Hollywood Police Officers’ Retirement System …

With merchants growing more heated in their opposition to card-acceptance costs, processors are looking for strategies that could help sellers gain from improvements in card authorizations. An example emerged early Thursday with news from the big Canadian processor Nuvei Corp. that it has introduced a pair of technologies it says …